Newsstand: February 11, 2013

Ready or not, here Monday comes, you can't hide. Gonna find you, and make you want news: Judge rules on bird-wounding buildings, Mayor has plan to eliminate the land transfer tax, a councillor clears the snow with the City doesn't, and the people want to pay taxes.

Mary Poppins once taught it us it cost a tuppence to feed the birds. A judge rules today how much one company should pay for maiming the birds. A decision is expected in the case against Cadillac Fairview and their big glass building that was responsible for more than 800 bird deaths in 2010. Birds get confused by reflections of sky and trees and accidentally fly smack into the buildings. If the company is found liable, they could owe millions of dollars under various environmental laws.

Mayor Rob Ford told everyone out there in radio land that he’s ready to do away with the land transfer tax. During his weekly talk show the mayor said he’d start scaling back the tax a wee bit at a time; 10 per cent here, 10 per cent there, until it and all the revenue it generates for the city are gone.

When snow piles up at the end of driveways in councillor Mike Del Grande’s (Ward 39, Scarborough-Agincourt) neighbourhood, councillor Mike Del Grande is on it. The councillor is so adamant that those pesky walls of snow left behind by ploughs should be cleared (by someone other than the driveway owner) that he personally went out this weekend and cleared a few himself. Del Grande fought to keep “windrow cleaning,” that is the technical term for making a clearing in the snow wall so that a car can access its driveway, in the City’s budget. Well at least for people who live in suburban areas. For all you downtowners, don’t expect Mike Del Grande’s help digging out from your street parking spot.

Speaking of downtowners, a groups of concerned transit users met at Metro Hall over the weekend as part of Metrolinx’s ongoing public consultations. And they have an idea: just raise taxes already. The group expressed support for raising sales tax to dedicate some revenue to transit projects. Because just like the groups that gathered for consultations elsewhere in the region, the people seem interested in something, anything that will make it easier to get around.